Fear used to be super useful on a day to day basis… it kept us from allowing our curiosity to pick up deadly reptiles and such… it kept us in caves when big things were growling… and lurking
sure, I guess fear is actually still pretty useful in that it keeps us from walking out in front of cars or playing games with paperclips and electrical sockets, but it does seem like most fear is pretty much just a hindrance… simply a tool of demobilization or over-reaction or directionless worry
Quick back story – Fear triggers our brain into the ‘quicker’ part of our brain (brainstem and limbic system) so that we aren’t overly slowed down by our ‘slow” – “lets think about this rationally” cortex. This is truly marvelous from a evolutionary standpoint – our brain adapted in such a way as to know when the slow cortex was less useful to our survival than the ‘lower’ parts of our brains, which had been in existence for millions more years. additionally fear activates your sympathetic nervous system – this gets your body ready for action, but feels really really uncomfortable if there is no action to be taken.
for an example lets think about a coiled up rattle snake – if you wanted to avoid a strike you better move with a timeless assertive pace to get out of the way. The moment you start ‘thinking’ about that snake is a couple moments after the thing would have already bitten you. Additionally your muscles need to prepare for quickness and energy needs to be diverted from unimportant tasks like digesting your food. The snake’s brain incidentally is very similar to our brainstem (your biology teacher might have referred to your brainstem as your reptilian brain back in the day). The same is true for the snakes survival – it doesn’t think “well… is that rabbit close enough” – instead an automatic reaction is triggered when the relevant environmental stimuli all line up.
so what’s the problem with fear? over time social connections, status and relationships proved to be pivotal to human survival, and our brain then evolved to generate fear responses to perceived threats to our relationships to others. This too is not totally a bad thing… you would feel fear if you were to steal from another member of the group in broad daylight… the fear is evolutionarily useful as the tribe would have likely expelled your from the group if you were caught stealing – and more than likely you would have died without your group.
where Fear can become particularly un-useful is with this whole idea of ‘perceived’ threat to social status… this is so ambiguous… how are we to know with any certainty what the social and relational repercussions of our actions are to be? and worse still, the perception of the ethics of our actions is mostly subjective = meaning that the same action could earn you praise or banishment depending on the perceiver – wow.
This paves the way for us to live in a constant state of fear caused by the double-binds inherent in trying to deduce the social ramifications of our actions. What really stinks is that in a state of fear your sympathetic nervous system is activated (fight or flight) as opposed to your parasympathetic nervous system. When your parasympathetic nervous system is off you don’t get to do really useful things well like digesting food or sleeping.
can self-awareness and insight help to ease the burden of this anxiety soup? maybe…
“its only fear” was lyrically suggested from an artist singing through my radio on the way to work today, and I thought with a kind smile on my face, “yep that’s true.”
I noticed the fear living in my body – I isolated it and contemplated about its energetic nature.
I have a double-bind that I’ve been holding for about three years – both decisions will cause relationship reactions (positive and negative), and now it appears that the option of in-action also has social/relational ramifications.
Fear is a thing just like anything else
I smiled with a laugh that knows the ridiculousness of this drama plain and assured myself that the singer was correct… its only fear… choices are going to be made with or without it
perhaps when we can see our fear with a smile of validation we can move towards allowing ourselves to be free from its debilitating pull.
and in this freedom we move forward to where we must be going.